Idea of Little Ethiopia in Toronto gets a boost

NATALIE STECHYSON

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2010 10:59PM EST

Samuel Getachew is the first to admit he’s an ambitious man, and over steaming mugs of bitter kaffa at Wanza Restaurant, he makes no apologies for his big dreams or the people who oppose them.

“I’m proposing changes,” he said matter-of-factly in the Danforth

Avenue Ethiopian eatery. “Change always gets attacked when it’s moving forward.”

Samuel Getachew is the first to admit he’s an ambitious man, and over steaming mugs of bitter kaffa at Wanza Restaurant, he makes no apologies for his big dreams or the people who oppose them.

“I’m proposing changes,” he said matter-of-factly in the Danforth Avenue Ethiopian eatery. “Change always gets attacked when it’s moving forward.”

And Mr. Getachew’s dream of a “Little Ethiopia” on Danforth Avenue, as improbable as it seems, is moving forward. After more than a year of being told “no” by the board of one of the biggest Business Improvement Areas in the city, the 34-year-old helped organize a new slate of board candidates for the Danforth Mosaic BIA elections.

Twelve of the new candidates were elected on Dec. 2, effectively usurping the old board. Three of the 12 are Ethiopian – two own restaurants in the area and one is an accountant. Mr. Getachew said he’s confident Little Ethiopia will now be back on the table.

“Hopefully, we are the BIA this time and now they will listen to us,” Mr. Getachew said with a grin.

Up to 70,000 people of Ethiopian origin live in the GTA and surrounding region, according to the executive director of the GTA’s Ethiopian Association. But Toronto doesn’t have an officially branded neighbourhood for any African country. Italians, Greeks, Koreans, South Asians, Chinese and Portuguese all have pockets of town to call their own. Even tiny Malta has a few blocks named after it in the Junction. More reading The Globe and mail.